Hong Kong: Retail sales in Hong Kong during the month of February across all categories registered a 5.7% drop in value terms and a 6.1% fall in volume terms year-on-year, according to statistics released recently by the HK government. Provisional estimates put the sales at $34.8 billion during February. Sales have now fallen for the last 24 consecutive months, though the rate of decline in recent months has been relatively slower than before.
The government has said that though there has been a marginal improvement in tourist arrivals in recent months, there was not much of an improvement in tourist spending. Analysts believe that the strength of the local currency has been one of the factors responsible for this.
There was however, some boost for the jewellery industry. Sales in the category “Jewellery, Watches and Clocks, and Valuable Gifts” registered a 2.5% growth in sales value in February though in volume terms the category showed a decline of 2%.
Given that the Chinese New Year fell on January 28 this year as against February 8 last year, the government also announced figures for the two months combined. As per provisional estimates, the value of total retail sales decreased by 3.2% compared with the same period in 2016.
For this two-month period, the value of sales of jewellery, watches and clocks, and valuable gifts decreased by 1.2%, which was lower than the fall in other categories such as apparel (-6.9%); electrical goods and photographic equipment (-23.6%); miscellaneous consumer durable goods (-14.9%) and furniture and fixtures (-5.4%).
